Faith is a Rottweiler Puppy.

Christine left a response on my previous post, asking why I talk all the time about the "bow down to Almighty God" aspect of religion, but I never discuss the nature of faith.

Well, I guess the problem is that I have no faith. I'm not without hope, and I'm not without trust, but I don't believe in unconditional faith in the way that Job or Abraham supposedly had it. Thing is, although faith is irrational (or "arational"? Without rationality?) and potentially dangerous (when used to wield power over others), I can't argue that faith is wrong or bad, because it's not a voluntary state of being. You either have faith in something or you don't. I don't.

I also cannot claim that faith is bad for people, because it's not. True: if you place your faith in the wrong hands, you can be led to believe absurdities, cause harm, and be exploited (you know... like if you're John Travolta. Goddamn, his poor son). But there are loads of studies that show that people with religious faith tend to be happier in their lives. Faith gives people a sense of order within the universe, when all evidence suggests that we are living in a tumult of perpetual chaos.

Ultimately, it depends on the object of your faith, and on the choices you make as a result. Living in shame for the sins of humanity is a miserable way to be. Living in hate for the sins of humanity, also pretty nasty. But if you have faith that humanity will be redeemed; or that the unjust will be punished by the turning wheel of life; that there is purpose to your existence; or a cosmic truth to be revealed - you will benefit from some sense of peace at "knowing" that.

I suppose, although there's something to be gained from it, I feel angry at the many negative consequences of faith in the world. There are people who believe they have a greater purpose on this earth, and so strap bombs to their bodies or take guns to abortion clinics. There are people who believe that the "truth" lies outside of science, and so attempt to heal their dying children by praying over them. There are people who believe that they have a right to judge and hurt and restrict and abuse certain people, because there is a higher power who disapproves of those people. Those "certain people" have been women, blacks, Irish Protestants, Irish Catholics, Jews, Muslims, the disabled, the mentally ill, people of science and medicine, homosexuals, Christians, and their small, bewildered and uncomprehending children.

The problem as I see it is that the very irrationality of faith makes it a perfect vehicle for the gaining of illegitimate power.

I recently found a Voltaire quote that goes some way to explaining what I mean:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Some of those atrocities involve bombs and bloody sieges. But most of the time, they involve simple cruelty, unjustified prejudice, and acts that place the requirements of spirituality above the needs of the human beings around them.

The Fear of God?

We live in a Christian culture. No, you're quite right; it's not the biggest faith in the world, but it's the most infectious. It has spread across the planet and become dominant in America, Europe, Britain and Australia. There are churches throughout Africa and missionaries all over the place. You don't have to be born Christian; you just have to take a bath. Many strains of Christianity actively encourage their followers to convert others to the faith.

What they don't realise is that Christianity is a stepping-stone toward secular society.

I realised this while reading today about the language of awesome. It was actually a blog post about how science captivates us, but the author, Alice Bell, made the point that "the language used to express wonder ... shares something with the history of language used to refer to God." And it occurred to me that language associated with scientific discovery is flourishing, but the way we describe the Christian God is just not resonating old school anymore.

The God of the Hebrews was (in his own words) a "jealous god". He was great, and powerful, and forbidding. He sent forth commands and threats, and his wrath was terrible to those who invoked it. He was a god of morals, but his morality was rigid and his punishments were terrifying, and so he struck awe and devotion into the hearts of his people.

The gods of the Ancient Greeks, the Romans and the Norse were not gods of morals. These great pantheons of deities were mighty and immortal, but they were not concerned with a grand plan for humanity. Thor struck the earth with lightning bolts; Ares was violent and bloodthirsty. Zeus actively interfered with the human world for his own pleasure and whim, while Loki wrought chaos for the sheer thrill of it. There was no guarantee that these gods would be on your side. You had to work for it. They were vain gods, powerful but egotistical. Worship was an option, but if you wanted to win, you knew who to call.

But when Jesus arrived and started the process of redefining God, he taught us that God is love. God is forgiveness, and tolerance, and kindness. No more vengeance; no more wrath: Jesus died and we were absolved. You don't have to be a member of a "chosen people" and you don't have to suffer eternal punishment for your wrongs. Just apologise. Just learn to be better next time.

And you can debate me if you like, but I think that the moment people started believing this was the moment it became possible to live without fear of God. Sure, people kept fearing him. Plenty still do. But for the majority of us, faith is an unassuming hobby. We have this kind of idea that something's out there watching us, but we're not worried. We figure he (she, they, ze, it) understands. And we get on with our lives.

I actually think Christianity has diluted God. Our picture of him is vaguer, fuzzier. He might not even be a he (she, they, ze, it). In fact, attempts at clearly describing God automatically lapse into parody.

And the faithful will say that this is because God is beyond our understanding; he transcends this existence, he is greater than it. But whatever. The human mind isn't capable of grasping eternity, or alternate dimensions, or a reality outside of time. It sounds like a challenge or an insult, but it's true. We can only grasp these concepts in terms of our own reality. God is "personal". Despite his lack of biological functions, he has a gender. God is reactionary. Despite existing outside of time, he responds to events within time.

But making him so impossible for us to envision makes him less and less and less real than the randy, vengeful, interactive, flawed and awesome gods that came before him.

Christians have defined God into something impossible within our vocabulary. God does not exist in our reality.

Let me rephrase that.

In our reality, God does not exist.

Vision and Taste.

I have strong opinions about art.

I used to be an enthusiastic and prolific young artist. I won the Brighton Art Society's Student Encouragement Award in my final year at school. I was most fond of drawing and sketching, but also loved to paint and work with clay. I might've really pursued that line of work. But there was one major reason why I didn't.

I really don't like art.

I love beautiful things. If Oscar Wilde's definition of art were true, I probably would like it, but art is not about beautiful. Hasn't been for almost a century now. Art is about statements, about provocation, about controversy. We go to see the bleeding rabbis, the furious triangles, the turd on the pedestal.

I have never been able to immerse myself in gallery-going. I'm sure many people love it, but despite my art-heavy education, I just cannot stroll along a white wall pinching my chin and gazing into windows of profundity, like you're meant to do at art galleries. I'll stare; I'll squint; I'll peer closely at the brushstrokes. But fifteen minutes in, I've started skipping the pieces that I don't think are pretty.

I actually do love immersing myself in thoughtful human works. Books and films enthrall me. I'm not a music buff but there are certain songs that stop my breath. Yet visual art moves me not.

I think it's because I made my own rules about how art ought to be when I was very young, and top of the list was "pretty". So to me, this was art:

And for all you might wish to say about his revolutionary genius, Picasso cannot compete with that.

Caution: Artwork Ahead

I call it "Single Girl Home Alone on a Saturday Night".

We're In Business.

All right, I'm kinda pumped that everyone seems to be talking about feminism now. I know I let International Women's Day slide by without a mention, but hey, better late than never, right?

Today's topic seems to be "Careers and Babies Don't Mix". Christine posted a rare article at her blog, Mind The Gap, discussing the pay gap (still about 17% for Australian full-time workers) and the assumption that motherhood equals career sacrifice.

My friend Louise recently read SuperFreakonomics, a US title that covered (amongst many other things) the wage gap in America. She tells me this book cites three main factors causing American women to earn a lower wage than men:

education: women have slightly lower GPAs and take fewer finance courses than men
the clock: men work an average of 6 more hours per week than women for the first 15 years of their careers, which adds up to about 6 months less work experience over that time
leave: women have more career interruptions than men; four times as many women take 6+ month breaks in the first decade of their careers

Look, I can't rebut the first point without going way deep into investigating the gender differences in education, and that's for another day. So I'll just say I'd been hearing that girls tend to do better at institutionalised learning, and graduate university in higher numbers than boys these days? I thought there were actually concerns about this imbalance. Was I wrong?

As for working less hours per week, okay, first of all it terrifies me that 58 hours is the average work week for American men. Second, I actually would like to see corresponding statistics showing how many hours of domestic work are done by those people.

The stats Louise quoted are American, but I found some info about Australian people's division of time. This ABS report is from 2006. It records that women spent on average 2 hours 52 minutes per day on unpaid "commitments", meaning domestic work, childcare etc. This is 1 hour 15 minutes more than the average for men. We're not talking "working week" here, so we can multiply that by seven days to find our weekly labour gap: 8 hours 30 minutes more.

(When looking specifically at childcare, the report tells us women spent an average of 59 minutes per day on dedicated childcare. This is three times as much as men's 22 minutes.)

Look, I'm not saying men are lazy. I'm really, really not. But I don't think it occurs to many men that there is no good reason why they shouldn't share domestic work 50-50. Women have this idea that they should take care of it. So they do. Then it becomes expected; then it becomes ingrained. Then full-time work seems less realistic. Then they get pregnant and, well, there's the first fifteen years of your career.

This is the breakdown of part-time and full-time employment in Australia.

(clicking on the chart will take you to the online PDF document)

This is the breakdown of underemployed part-time workers in Australia.

By underemployed, they mean "this is how many more hours we wish we were getting". Note how many women wish they were getting 10-19 more hours of work per week. (These are part-time workers only - I doubt full-timers would be wishing for more hours.) Remember, nearly half of women workers work part-time. They're willing to work more. They're just not getting the shifts.

Again referring back to the SuperFreakonomics list, apparently women take more holidays than men. Especially during their early, childbearing years. I am assuming, of course, that a large chunk of what we're looking at here is maternity leave. If not, then maybe we're all just like those filthy Spaniards after all, just working for to purchase our tequila.

You know what? Screw that. It's not about what women choose. It's about what women need, and a system that punishes them for it. And a culture where women can have what they want, as long as they're prepared to not sleep, ever.

There's this hilarious outdated myth of the superwoman, where a lady can have a husband and a set of healthy, attractive children and a nice home and a high-flying career and do yoga and still somehow manage to look like a goddamn centrefold all the time. Which we now know to be ridiculous. One woman can't do all those things.

A man can.

Why?

Because a man is supported by his wife. A man with a happy family and a successful career is a man who's not doing it on his own. In our makeshift fantasy, his wife is probably a homemaker or does some kind of nice part-time community work, but you know what? She could have a full-time job too. Or they could both work part-time. Or whatever other kind of combination you can think of. As long as both members of the couple were actually in agreement about the effort they put into their shared life.

Feminism is not just about what women want. It's about finding a new balance between men and women. One that involves a lot of compromise, and a lot of re-imagining, and a whole bunch of understanding. And it involves showing men that they don't actually have to work 58 hours a week anymore. There are other options.

Walk like a man.

I'm a feminist.

I don't care what you think a feminist is. I don't care whether you think feminists are outdated or unnecessary. I'm proud to see it how I see it.

Part of feminism is about recognising that there once was an embarrassing level of inequality. Not too long ago, women were considered so feeble-minded that they weren't permitted to vote. It took far too long for the laws to change. South Australian women were granted the vote in 1894, but it took another 14 years for the rest of the country to catch up, and it took ten more years after that (1918) for women to be eligible for election. I know this is almost a hundred years ago and it seems like old news. But how old is the human race? How could it have taken us this long to recognise that our females are not dithering imbeciles?

As the twentieth century rolled out, women across the world were granted that precious vote and began to prove their might. Women reinvented themselves as workers, as professionals, as revolutionary thinkers. Today we have all the same legal rights as men, and there are certain laws and conventions established to support female-specific circumstances. You know, like pregnancy. That's good.

But I believe we will need feminists until the day there is no man on earth who dares to say, "you throw like a girl". Don't you understand that legal rights are only step one? Today's enemy is attitude. And the world has a serious attitude problem.

The reason that laws for equality are so hard to pass in the first place is the attitude of politicians and lobby groups. Once we break through that barrier, we've made a start. But the law is only there to stop people from discriminating. If they didn't want to discriminate, we wouldn't need a law. Millions of people still believe that "women should submit to their husbands". Millions of men would still rather hire only other men. Millions of people would rather restrict us or try to control our choices.

And if feminism is about nothing else, it's about choice.

Perhaps we shouldn't have stopped calling it "Women's Lib". See, "feminism" is meant to be about equality, but what we truly want is liberty. Yeah, in principle, we want to be regarded as the equals of men, but in practice, we want to be able to live a life of our own choosing. What's stopping us? Not the law. Not the men. Attitude.

I believe in stay-at-home mothers.
I believe in women who share bank accounts with their husbands.
I believe in women who work in traditionally female fields, like nursing and childcare and hairdressing and teaching and baking croissants.

Why wouldn't I? What possible reason would I have for not supporting those options? Jesus Christ, if it's what you want, go for it.

But any woman who advocates one specific way of life for all women does not get feminism.
Any woman who claims that women should based on what women are does not get feminism.
Who are you to define us all?

Vitriolic Atheist (warning: contains atheist vitriol)

Yeah, so I'm feeling kinda venomous about religion lately.

I spent a couple of months listening, and learning, and gaining a different perspective on the Christian faith, and I told myself, "You've changed! You don't feel the need to shout it down anymore!" But, of course, it all kind of went to crap when Lady Friend decided that the priesthood wasn't edgy enough for her.

I can respect other people's choices about their lives. This is why I made peace with all of her differences. Her Linux obsession; her homemade toothpaste; her Sunday rituals. Cool. It was therefore strange to me that, two months into a relationship with me, Lady Friend went quiet and then said, "I think we're going to have a problem about our views on faith." Strange because duh, it's going to take some accepting; and strange because I already did that accepting two months ago. You didn't? What, am I so hot you just forgot I was an atheist?

Fast forward through the next two weeks and somehow the whole relationship has just faded to grey. It's a real shame. I'm not out to do a character assassination, and if this is coming across that way, I'm sorry. As I explained to Lady Friend numerous times, when I call somebody a dork, it's a compliment, so things like making your own toothpaste are absolutely a point of intrigue for me. However, I am astounded that religion has caused such direct damage to this relationship.

Two weeks ago, she de-relationshipped me on Facebook, on the grounds that her class were warned about cyber-bullying and she decided she'd better "tread carefully". She told me it wasn't about us at all. I shouldn't have believed her.

I just don't understand how an intelligent, free-thinking, independent, adventurous and open (til now?) lesbian can be convinced that she should cut good people out of her life for the sake of her faith. No, I did the deed, but she would've if I hadn't. Read this. (Feminism? Really?)

Look, this is obviously for the best, and I'm actually doing quite well. (I wish I had a pretty girl to cuddle, but hell, I've been wishing that for the past two weeks and wondering why I was missing out.) But I think my atheist vitriol has been suppressed for too long and now I just feel like screaming, "It's all make-believe! Make-believe!"

(With apologies to Mez. And Rabia. And... yeah, all of you.)

Stuffed Up.

I've been thinking a lot lately about stuff. You know, like, things? Material goods. Things we buy.

Women buy a lot of stuff we don't need. Stuff we can't eat, stuff we can't wear, stuff we never use. Like candles.

Open question to my lady readers: of all the candles you have bought and received throughout your young life, what proportion did you actually light?

Personally, I went through a few phases of thinking candles were rad. Age 11-13, then later, very briefly, around 15 or so. Then I sort of realised that candles are annoying and flickery and they don't produce enough light to read by, and they burn oxygen and they drip wax and they kinda smell. But candles are so... exciting. For some reason. We just really like them.

We also like bangles, and pretty cushions, and nice servingware, and dangly earrings. We can't help ourselves. Ooh, shiny!



(naturally these are all Etsy items and you can click through to them)

What is this instinct in women (I defy you to challenge my gender stereotyping) that compels us to gaze into jewellery store windows? Women actually get high on shopping. There's a dopamine rush thing, it's all documented and such. Women end up with bursting wardrobes of clothes they forgot to ever wear, and jewellery cabinets overflowing with all manner of sparkling candies.

Speaking without any scientific backup here, I observe that men who "collect" are more likely to own a small number of very large or expensive things (most notably cars, guitars, and lifesize naturalistic silicone sex dolls). Women, however, are great accumulators of what men like to call "crap". As in ornaments, trinkets, accessories, centrepieces, display pieces, conversation pieces, mood pieces, and so on.

As you may know, I am speaking as one with a genetic predisposition toward hoarding. My mother has a collection of stamps, videotapes, vinyl records, books, sewing supplies, commemorative coins, CDs, DVDs, unused Christmas cards, papercraft, elephants, fruit trees, handmade clothing, knitting wool, and thesis notes. For starters. My grandparents filled their family home with so much stuff that it took my mum and three or four of her siblings and their partners about three months to clean it out.

Luckily, so far the condition hasn't manifested in me. I'm messy, for sure, but I'm not an accumulator. I always hated shopping, especially for clothes; I struggled with gift-buying and I never understood how catalogues could be a pastime. However. There has been a recent divergence from this lifelong pattern, and it cometh in the form of Etsy. I'm not talking about shopping for vintage knick-knacks or handmade wackiness, I'm talking about supply shopping. I have ridiculous quantities of jewellery findings at home, yet I still trawl the site for more. Just look at my damn Favorites list. Which I do actually try to keep under control, by the way. And I'm usually pretty good at convincing myself not to buy stuff: I've only made four orders this year, all less than $20. But all for supplies. And as previously stated, I already have supplies. This is not based on need.

Only so much of this can be explained by the nesting instinct. I understand the nesting instinct: it kicked in in a big way when I moved in with Christine a few years ago. Kitchen things! Glorious kitchen things! Spice jars and a grater and a whisk and cappuccino cups and a big-arse fridge! And we went through an IKEA phase of wanting some furniture that hadn't been rescued from hard rubbish collection.

But 78 pairs of high-heeled shoes cannot be explained by the nesting instinct. A comprehensive collection of therapeutic herbal oil-scented candles cannot be explained by the nesting instinct.

What's the whole deal with stuff?

Fucking women.

Well, if I was a literary figure, now would be about the time I met the real love of my life except she was the daughter of my sworn enemy and we conducted a clandestine courtship and secret marriage then killed ourselves because it was all too hard.

Baby just cares for me.

When you're depressed, one of the greatest obstacles you have to getting well again is the idea that you don't deserve to try and get well again.

You can reason this any number of ways. Some people seriously believe they're not worth a damn, and feel ashamed of themselves for the trouble their sadness is causing. But it's not usually so straightforward. Some people think: the problem is in my head and I shouldn't give it the satisfaction of treating it like it's real. Others feel they just haven't got time to devote to self-indulgent soul-searching. Or that they should recover naturally if they throw themselves into external efforts, stay busy and avoid worrying about themselves.

There are plenty of ways to mentally justify not looking after yourself. The trouble is, you only have yourself to look to. It's so, so easy to ask yourself, "Hey, wanna go shopping for vegies today, since the fridge is empty?" and to reply, "No, it's okay, I'm not that hungry, I'll make do."

I was talking to a friend the other day, and she told me her mother's answer to this problem. Her mother said, "Sweetheart, pretend you're taking care of somebody else."

It's such a perfect way of turning the tables on yourself. And it's just such a mum way of looking at it. If you offer yourself a kindness, there's nothing stopping you from deciding not to take it. But if you offer support to someone who needs it, and that person won't take it, you don't just accept that. You don't want to see them struggle or fall. Especially if you are responsible for that person. Especially if you love them.

Your mother always did it "for your own good", even if you didn't believe her. Sometimes it's just so hard to recognise what's good for you.

My friend pointed out that this approach requires you to create a split in your perception of yourself. Not just a mind-body split, because both are affected by illness and depression; both need to be cared for and considered. It's actually a split within the mind. But I'm not sure where the division goes - when you've separated yourself from your reasoning, your emotion, from the way you live amongst people in the world, from your loves and hates and human identity, what is left?

Perhaps, some would say, the soul is left. But this suggests that it's the soul that takes care of the person, and not the person that takes care of the soul. I've never really understood quite what a soul was supposed to be, so I can't really work with the concept (though I mean to investigate it). So, what would you say is the division? Who is it, that person that is you outside yourself?

All the girls love a clown.

You say your perfect mate would have "a sense of humour", but that's not really what you mean. If you're a girl, you probably mean "someone who makes me laugh". If you're a boy, you're more likely to mean "someone who thinks I'm funny".

Hear me out - this makes excellent sense in biological terms. The proverbial female is looking for good genes to mix with. She's not going to mix with just any genes - gene-mixing is a rather large investment for a female (9 months of being fat, 2-3 years of carrying a screaming, smelly thing, 10-20 years of cleaning up after it and protecting it from peril and strife). So, she wants a guy with bio-assets. The ability to produce humour is one sign of a quick, clever and creative mind. And she wants the very best.

The proverbial male is looking for quality genes too, but he doesn't guard his seed so fiercely as she. His primary mission is to find someone willing to mix genes with him. If she's clever enough to get his jokes, she's clever enough for him. If she likes his jokes, he's in with a chance.

This is all bio-logic, mind you. It's a theory explaining why humans have an instinct for comedy. It matches up roughly with our perceptions of men and women, too - more men than women make their careers in comedy; men are more likely to use humour in their interactions; women are more likely to laugh at jokes. Many studies have found that women laugh more than men.

Does this mean men are actually funnier than women?

Actually, I don't think the difference lies in the quality of men's and women's humour. I think the difference is in the way we respond to it. All of us - male and female - are socially wired to share jokes with our same-sex peers. Making a successful joke is a symbol of status; laughing at the jokes of others shows respect, kinship and sameness ("my mind works like your mind").

So men laugh by instinct at the jokes of other men. And women laugh at each other's jokes. But when humour is shared between men and women, there is some remnant of our ancient social code that tells us he should be trying to impress her, and not the other way around. If she jokes with him, a secret part of him feels challenged by that. If she's funnier than he is, then she can do better, and she will reject him.

But now, our culture is beginning to accept the idea of men and women as peers. Which means men and women share and compete for status. Some of us crazy feminists complain that there's still a long way to go, but your average man in the workplace has absolutely no problem with working with - or for - a woman.

He just doesn't know how to laugh at her jokes.

Not his fault; not her fault. Just instinct.

*

I fall outside the heterosexual model, so it occurs to me I might not have the same instincts as Ms Proverbial Female. Personally, I tend to prefer "someone who thinks I'm funny". I like to laugh for sure, and I love talking to people who tickle that funny bone. But I don't laugh often, and I definitely prefer the company of folks who like my brand of humour.

Why? Plenty of reasons. I'm egotistical and like the flattery. I find comedian types exhausting if I hang around them too long. It's also quite exciting to meet someone who gets my jokes, because my jokes are kind of odd. I've been told my branch of the family has weird humour genes. (I'm looking at you, Grandma.)

But why would it be valuable for me to be seen as funny? I'm not particularly interested in the power that comes with high social status. But there is an understanding that funny people are clever and creative thinkers. That's who I'd like to be.

Comedy is quite a thing. I wrote last month about what makes humans special, and I think humour is one of those things. Other animals do "laugh" with one another, but humans are the only creatures with the ability to express ideas in ways that are deliberately wrong, and then bask in the absurdity of their own thoughts.

*

Also, here are some more photos of zebras making funny faces.